Random Aussie Shots

Here The Lizard has taken over the house barbecue at my place in Sunshine Beach. The barbecue is an Australian cultural icon. Almost any park or picnic ground has them; often, they're gas barbecues free of charge. I'm doing almost all of my cooking on the barbie...chook, snags (sausage), steak, whatever. Nice setting for a barbie, I reckon! My friend Wayne in PDX is a master barbecuer...he'd fit in well here!

Australia has quite a good system of parks. This is Alexandria Bay, a gorgeous beach in Noosa National Park that I first visited in 1985. It's only about a 1 1/2 kilometer walk from the Balinese Beach House, so it's a pleasant stroll...and you do have to stroll. No roads into the area. It's a fine wilderness beach. You can continue on the tracks and wind up sipping a latte on Hastings Street in the heart of Noosa Heads in about 4 km. The mix of sophisticated urbanity, beach culture, and bush wilderness here is superb! By the way, being an offroad beach there's no need to wear a cossie here...but mind your bum if you don't as the antipodean sun is fierce!

There are many national parks here as they basically encompass areas that would be either state or national parks in the US...there are no state parks here that I know of.

This is a brush box tree in the rainforest of Lamington National Park, near O'Reilly's. These big trees are remnants of a cooler, wetter era; apparently they're not reproducing much nowadays. The brush boxes are up to 1500 years old. Being fat around the base and massive in general, they're kind of like Australian sequoias.